Happy Birthday!

Stepping Stones had it's 36th Birthday on Friday 20th July. We let our older and longest standing members of staff blow out the candles. These ladies have a combined service of about 95 years - can you believe so many years! Everyone sang Happy Birthday in 3 languages (English, Afrikaan and Xhosa) and then we all had 'cake'!!!

With the Olympic Games upon us we started this term with a look at Ancient Greece and some of the wonderful things that came from those times including the Olympic Games. The children were facinated by the various Gods and goddesses as well as the alphabet, clothing, homes and wars of the times.

With Philip Martins wonderful illustrations and posters and labels from Twinkl I made this display wall. The children cut out and painted their greek vases for art!

So much has happened since my last blog and yes I know it has been almost 2 months but how time flies. To update - we had our annual Music day and a lot of fun was had by all!

Mini Michael Jackson!

Guest dancers from the Eastern Cape

Exposing the children to the bagpipes!

We all sing together!

We also had a special World Environment week where each group did  project on Energy saving or use. We invited our local Environment guru to come and jude the competition and she was blown away by our presentations. The grade 3& 4 group presented a pie chart on their energy use and saving at home and at school. The grade 2 group did a project on renewable and non-renewable enengy and the Grade one group worked out what had been consumed in a week and drew a house with a family doing a lot to make a difference. All were winners but the grade 1 group were given the prize for their beautiful depiction!

 Grade 3 & 4 presentation!

 Grade 2 presentation!

 The winning poster by Grade 1!

Grade 2 Group standing proudly with Sue in front of their posters!

Our artists were also winners at the eisteddfod this year winning gold and silver certificates- well done to all!

Well done Grade 2!

End of term was then upon us and hubby and I took a break to Summerset West (near Cape Town) the weather was not too good butr the highlight has to be a visit to the car museum in Franchoek where I found my Ferrari ( I alway tell the kids "I want a Farrari and I am not going to get one!" when they use the dreaded "I want..." for an impossible request. So here it is kids!!!!!!!

Well that is all for now! Back to school on Monday so have to get last prep done!

Literacy week and Mother's Day

This week was all about books and reading. We ended off the week with the children dressing up as their favourite character from a book or story - wonderful to see such  diverse tastes in literature. There are however some children who seldom read and preferred to dress up as a movie character ( note to self - get the parents to read!)

We also made Mother's Day cards and pendants ( both ideas from pinterest) The card had a mother bird hugging a baby bird - I used scrapbook paper for the cut outs. The pendants were air dried clay hearts with child's fingerprint on threaded on chord with beads for decoration. - the big problem came when the wrapping started, a feat the children seemed to struggle with!(need to give some lessons before Father's Day!)

Happy Mother's Day to all Bloggers and friends - have a wonderful day!

Birdwatching for National Bird Week

On Friday 4 May the entire prep school went birdwatching on Leisure Isle which is on the lagoon and has a wealth of birdlife including a large selection of waterbirds. We set off along the walkers path armed with birdlists, binoculars, pencils and cameras. Small groups of children excitedly pointed out various birds and attempted to count them. The highlight for me was a beautiful fisheagle soaring overhead. The fisheagle is the bird of the year so I felt privilaged to see it. After we had our lunch Mrs Abbot organised the children into teams for a dodgeball game. After that it was back to school and we all made woodpeckers that bounce along a piece of elastic. Such fun!

Celebrating being Proudly South African for Freedom Day

 We all dressed up in traditional or sporting or flag colours outfits. Grade 2 had lots of Green and Gold!

 We all brought traditional SA food to tast. A table full of melktert, koeksusters, samoosas, wors, biltong, vetkoek, hertzoggies and thank good ness some grapes!

 An avid South African supporter!

 A future Abie De Villiers!

Two traditional Xhosa outfits!

A most enjoyable day where we learned about our country and it's traditions. 18 years of democracy and freedom celebrated by all!

Starting our weather unit we wrote about meteorlogists and made some cute cut outs. Children really did well with this!

 Today we started our wind experiments and made paper folding fans and helicopters which we dropped from our treehouse and watched fly down - super activity (can we do it again teacher? _ please????)

 Some cloud ideas I got from pinterest - the best place for ideas!!!

Our water experiment - do plants need water? The red dye worked almost immediately, yello a little slower and the green hardly at all - interesting!!

Water week

We finished the first term with some water week activities. We did water experiments! Discussed the path of a river. Followed the river (stream) that runs along our school as far as we could ( alot of the area was overgrown - a huge pity!) Got int groups and with string dividing the sandpit we created rivers digging and moulding the sand to our liking - unfortunately there seemed to be a lot of disagrreing too so teacher had to play referee too. Once the rivers were completed we tested them by pouring in the water and seeing how it flowed. Much fun and enjoyment! I am also including a pic of my display wall created with a lot of pinterest ideas!!!